MANAGING FOR A BETTER WORLD

If you have 20 people in a two-hour meeting, that equates to a week’s work. Kate Kearins asks if you are clear about the purpose for each meeting you hold and work to achieve that purpose.

Towards better – and maybe fewer – meetings. By Kate Kearins.

Mmm... meetings. Despite my calendar being full of meetings and my quite liking them, I'm not convinced that everyone is thrilled about them. In fact, research shows that many people consider workplace meetings a waste of productive time.

More than $US37 billion a year is spent by American companies on meetings or what Harvard Business Review author Ron Carucci notoriously calls “one of organisational life's most insufferable realities”.

Employees in American companies reportedly spend more than a third of their time in meetings. An assessment of a global consumer products company revealed considerable frustration over how much time was taken up by meetings, with one interviewee reporting being left with “only evenings to do our day jobs”.

In that company, in the year analysed, a population of around 500 directors and above collectively spent the equivalent of six and a half years in meetings. Expensive, yes. Productive, maybe.

We've been thinking about the meetings we hold in the AUT Business School. We've tried to ensure we have the right people in the meetings, rather than involving people who don't need to be there, or for whom much of the meeting content might be irrelevant.

Another priority has been achieving the right kind of meeting culture, where everyone present feels able to speak up and be heard.

Prompted by one of our colleagues who is a consummate meeting chair, and a member of ICSA – The Governance Institute based in the UK, we are now looking at the objectives for the meetings we hold.

Our colleague reminded us that 20 people in a two-hour meeting equates to a week's work, and that we need to be clear about the purpose for each meeting we hold and work to achieve that purpose. Research backs him up. Being more purposeful about meetings will, I think, probably mean we cut out some unnecessary meetings.

Research also tells us workplace meetings tend to mushroom. Without due care, there is a tendency to hold too many of them and to allow them to go on for too long.

Ron Carucci contends that better meeting techniques and wellintentioned practices like distributing agendas, stand-up meetings and enforcing a no-device policy, won't solve the problem of a meeting that should not be held in the first place.

It's worth taking the time to think about the last meeting you attended that you felt was really worthwhile. What made it so? Do you think everyone there would be of the same opinion? Were the right people involved – either virtually or face-to-face? Were there clear objectives and a distinct focus?

I'm guessing the meeting you liked was convivial and collegial rather than a political battleground, that something got decided, or that there was a sense of a mutually satisfactory direction or purpose being achieved.

Maybe it was not one of your regular meetings. Or maybe it was – with a consummate chair where the agenda was well organised and people's time well spent on task.

Tellingly, you might also be prompted to reflect on a recent meeting that was ineffective. For Carucci, a consensus view that particular meetings are ineffective might well indicate the meetings should not be occurring. He tests groups by asking, “If you stopped meeting, who besides you would care?” If you can't think of anyone who would care, the solution is obvious and people will probably thank you for it.